A Revamped Fringe Festival Returns to New York

NEW YORK — The New York International Fringe Festival will return on Oct. 1 after a one-year hiatus with a new structure and the New York debut of a play about James Franco that had faced a legal hurdle.

The festival’s 21st season will be split into two parts. One, FringeNYC will present over 80 staged productions in the West Village from Oct. 12-28, while FringeBYOV (bring your own venue) will involve venues in the boroughs outside Manhattan like the Irondale Center in Brooklyn and the Secret Theater in Queens selecting their own performers and shows (Oct. 1-31).

The Present Theater Co., the creators and producers of the New York Fringe Festival, took 2017 to redesign the festival and plan for the future with its Blank Canvas Project.

“What we came out with was this bifurcated festival with two approaches that suits a lot of different generations, we think,” Elena K. Holy, the company’s producing artistic director, said in an interview.

FringeBYOV was added, she explained, to empower performing arts venues in the city by allowing them to do their own programing and reach a wider audience by operating under the aegis of the festival.

Among FringeNYC’s notable shows is Kevin Broccoli’s “James Franco and Me: An Unauthorized Satire.” The two-man play takes place in a hospital waiting room where Broccoli, who is visiting his dying father, converses with a fictionalized version of the movie star and director about mortality and culture, among other topics.

After receiving its world premiere as “James Franco and Me” at the Epic Theater Co. in Rhode Island in 2016, the play’s New York debut was canceled in 2017 when Franco’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Peoples Improv Theater, which was set to host the production. A modified title seems to have fixed the problem.

Other shows include “Simple Math: Solving for the Neurobiology of Assault,” an algebraically inclined play about an aspiring actress who discovers that her mentor is a sexual predator, written by Lisa Danielle Buch, and “The Existence Formula” from Sarah Rickman and the Juice Factory theater company, a comedic rumination on life and death.

A complete list of shows can be found at fringenyc.org; tickets go on sale Sept. 1.